


13 Years in Coldport

by Domoz



Category: Critical Hit (Podcast)
Genre: Headcanon, like a lot of Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 00:17:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5948851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domoz/pseuds/Domoz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their mother died when they were nine and Emmil was three, and they had to learn how to deal with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	13 Years in Coldport

They were nine years old when their mother died.

It was nothing dramatic. One day she just said that she had a headache and needed to lie down, and then she didn’t get back up. It took them a day to realize, and by then everyone else had realized something was wrong, too.

  
  


One of the old regulars of her bar - one of the nice ones - realized that something was wrong and organized a funeral. It was nice, for the Twins District, because people liked their mom and were sad to see her go.

  
  


Then another one of the regulars - one of the bad ones - heard about the funeral, got their gang together, and broke into the bar. It was free booze, they said, and no one cared enough about the Twins to do anything about this place, so it was a free hideout, too. Even at nine, Ket and Charlotte were smart enough to try and stay out of their way, but they still got pushed out the door to the sound of rough laughs and sarcastic, ‘Good luck out there's’’

  
  


Ket didn’t cry, even though he really wanted to. Charlotte screamed and yelled and punched a wall.

  
  


Emmil was a bit too young to understand, but he knew that his siblings were upset so he cried, and the two of them tried to put aside their anger and sadness to comfort him as best they could.

  
  


That night, they slept curled up in a dry drainage pipe and wondered what they were supposed to do.

  
  


-

There was something that was _supposed_ to be an orphanage in the Twins. Maybe, once upon a time, that’s what it had been, but by the time they got there it was nothing more than a run down shack that a gang member would come find every once in awhile so that he could recruit a couple of kids.

  
  


But Mom had hated gangs, said they were just groups of bullies that took advantage of people they shouldn’t. When the burly men with tattooed arms came and offered money to the kids with the quickest hands, the three of them hid in the corners and didn’t look him in the face. When the head of the orphanage implied that they ought to be doing some work to get their food, Charlotte bowed her head and offered to sweep the floor, and didn’t complain when the man dumped a handful of cooked rice on the ground and told her to get working.

  
  


He was a little nicer to her after that, and she got enough food for _herself_ , but Ket and Emmil hardly got enough for one person to share  between the two of them, so Charlotte shared everything with them.

(Mostly with Emmil. He was three, and he cried when he got hungry, and the two of them could stand their stomach growling a little better.)

  
  


-

  
  


One day, a lady came in and locked eyes with Ket and asked, “Have you ever cut a coin purse before?”

He shook his head, but she asked, “Well, would you like to?”

  
  


He didn’t hesitate as long as he felt like he should. He was too hungry and too tired to say no, and Charlotte gave him a hard look but she didn’t say no either.

  
  


He came back to them with a handful of copper pieces and enough food to last them through the week.

Charlotte counted the money and said it could last them for another week if they spent it right. Ket looked at the little piles she made and said, “I want the Scale Cauldon back.”

  
  


-

  
  


Emmil was a quiet kid, but he was smart. He was quick to pick up that he was supposed to hide when the guys with tattooed arms come in looking for ‘help,’ and he got good at not being found. He didn’t speak unless he was spoken to, and though that worried his older siblings, it also kept him out of trouble.

  
  


When they were halfway through the money Ket had brought home, Charlotte frowned and looked at the coins and said, “He should probably go to school. We did.”

  
  


And Ket nodded, but he frowned, too, because school meant money, and that would mean doing another job.

-

Ket wasn’t very good at picking pockets. A couple of copper was usually all that he could get, and that was usually pity money from the other kids, who got whole bags of silvers.

So Charlotte started to work, too. She never pretended to be any good at lifting a purse, so the man that picked her up told her that all she had to do was put packages in places without being seen.

  
  


It wasn’t hard. No one looked at a kid on the streets in Coldport, and she got three shiny silver coins for every drop she made. It added up, slowly, and before long they had enough to pay for Emmil’s entrance fee.

  
  


One night, she had to put a package in the loose brick at the corner of the stairs of the Cauldron - the one that their mom used to leave spare copper pieces in so that people who were having a rough time would have enough to pay for a meal and a room for the night. Charlotte came home sad after that one, and she sat down next to Ket and said, “I want home back, too, but I don’t think we’re getting it for a while.”

  
  


-

  
  


They lived like that for three years. Emmil was still quiet, but he went to school and Ket and Charlotte tried their hardest to make it so that he didn’t _have_ to be good at hiding.

Ket really, _really_ wasn’t a good pickpocket, but he found out that he was good at distracting adults while other adults snuck around and did their jobs. A man with gauges in his ears would pat Ket on the head and tell him that he  had a smart mouth, and that he’d better use it for them or else he’d be in real trouble.

For his work that day, they sent him back with a whole gold coin.

  
  


-

Other kids got adopted, but their new families were all gangs. Ket and Charlotte had tried never to work for one group for so long that they’d get stuck with them, and it had worked,  but now they were stuck in a worse way. It got hard to get money without joining up, and they ate through Ket’s gold in a matter of weeks.

  
  


They were thirteen, and Ket said quietly, “I don’t remember what mom looks like anymore.”

Charlotte nodded and said, “I don’t either.”

  
  


-

  
  


Then they turned fourteen, and the head of the orphanage called them over and said, “Look, kids, you’re practically adults now. Nobody’s gonna adopt you. I’m giving you a day to get your things together, and then you gotta get outta here.”

  
  


When he pushed them out of the door, it was close to midnight, and it was cold out.  They had one blanket between the three them, and Charlotte said she thought she knew a place with a fire that would let them sleep for a night.

  
  


But before they could get too far away, a very harried looking eladrin woman ran up to them, kneeled down and put a hand on Ket’s shoulder. She asked, “You’re Ket? And Charlotte? My name is Dorosolla Peacetree. I’m your grandmother.”

  
  


-

  
  


She brought them to an inn and they trusted her, because they met her once when they were seven and they didn’t have anywhere else to go. She said a lot of things, about how she only heard about what happened to their mother recently, how it was terrible, so terrible what they’ve been through, and she would have been here sooner if only she had known.

  
  


Then she turned to them with a sad look in her eye and said, “I hate to leave you like this, but I’m very busy. It’s the fate of the world, or else I’d never consider leaving you alone. But I’ll do all I can, and if you hear my voice in your head, don’t worry. That’s magic.”

  
  


She rented them out a little apartment room and gave them enough money to pay rent for six months, and promised to come back as soon as she could. It was the most money they'd ever seen, and when she divided it between the two of them she said, “Stay out of trouble, and please try and wash yourselves once in awhile.”

  
  


For once, things were okay.

  
  


-

  
  


They washed, but they didn’t stay out of trouble like their grandma had asked.

  
  


Ket still wanted the Scale Cauldron back, and when he saw the money their grandma gave them, he thought he might have a chance. He thought, _If we make enough money to pay rent and save what she’s gave us and a little more, then we can get enough to buy it back from the people who took it._

He wasn’t young enough to run distraction for gangs anymore, and he didn’t want to anyway, but he had picked up enough to know how to run a game of three card monte by himself.

  
  


Their mom had said that gangs were dangerous bullies, and he learned that lesson when they broke his nose, and again when they broke his arm. He didn’t make enough money to pay rent, or even enough to buy dinner more than once a week, but he was trying to make something.

  
  


-

  
  


Sometimes, Emmil would come back from school with a black eye and wouldn’t tell them who had given it to him.

“They didn’t mean it,” he’d say. “If I tell you, you’ll hurt them, and they didn’t mean it”

  
  


Sometimes, Emmil would come home with a jar filled with sticks and leaves and a caterpillar,and would keep it alive until it grew into a butterfly.

  
  


-

  
  


Grandma Peacetree came back four months later. She couldn’t stay long ,she said, there were important things afoot and she’d be back, but please stay safe.

She left them six more months worth of rent and disappeared out the door.

  
  


A week after that, their landlord picked up on what happening and told some of his friends, and people started showing up at their door asking if they would like insurance.  Ket knew _that_ scam, and he knew that they couldn’t say no, so instead he talked them down to half the price.

It was still a lot, but things could have been worse.

-

  
  


When Ket turned sixteen, he decided that he was tired from running away from cops and gangs, so he _became_ a cop. Here in the Twins, they were pretty much just a bigger, meaner gang, but he could at least try and pretend that he was doing some good.

Some of the cops really did try, and he tried to be one of them.

  
  


The pay, especially for a paper-runner like him, really wasn’t enough, so after work he would sneak into games at bars and try to make a little extra. He usually did, but sometimes he came home with nothing.

  
  


When Charlotte turned sixteen, she started coming home covered in grave dirt. She said that the work wasn’t fun, but it paid well, and she wouldn’t explain what it was. There was a dangerous look to her eyes that meant she was either robbing graves or fighting zombies, and Ket wasn’t sure which one he thought was worse.

-

  
  


It could only go on like that for so long. The next time the insurance men came, Ket couldn’t talk them down as far, and the time after that their prices went _up_ when he tried.

  
  


People left them alone when they realized that the money was gone. The solitude was nice, even if Ket and Charlotte had to go a little hungry again.

  
  


-

  
  


Emmil turned nine, which was the same age they were when they lost their mom and their home. The day passed by without any of them bringing it up. Charlotte brought him a bun covered in honey and he smiled the most genuine smile either of them had seen in months.

  
  


-

  
  


They saved up, little by little, but it turned out that they didn’t need money to take back the Cauldron at all.

The thugs who took it had left, leaving the windows broken in, the tables without legs, and shards of glass bottles all over the floor.

  
  


Ket saw it, all abandoned and broken up like that, the first time they put him on the beat. That night after work, he didn't run to a bar. He ran home. Charlotte nodded along with him, but when he was done talking she frowned and said, “We can take it, but we have to be strong enough to defend it. We weren’t last time.”

  
  


Ket said, “But we will be, this time.”

  
  


-

  
  


There wasn’t any rent to pay, but now they had windows to fix - and tables and shelves. The beds upstairs were still fit to sleep on, even if they were missing blankets,  and Emmil, at least, seemed to be happy that they were happy, even if he didn’t understand why they were calling it home.

  
  


It didn’t take too long to make it livable, but they didn’t have enough to make it a _bar_ again. But they all have their own rooms, now, and when it got cold they had a fireplace.

  
  


There were a couple of nights when someone would come to their door, asking what they were doing in here, and didn’t they know whose territory this was?

Charlotte asked if they remember their mother, and that got some of them to go away looking guilty. Ket stood outside in the wind and talked to all the others, haggling down how much they would have to pay to keep living there.

  
  


It wound up, ironically, costing about the same as rent did back in their little apartment. At least it was really _theirs_ , now.

  
  


-

The next time Grandma Peacetree showed up, Ket and Charlotte were nineteen, and for the first time she wasn’t in a rush at all. She sat with them and offered to brew them some tea.

She said that she was sorry, she wanted to be here, to help, and now it seemed she was a bit too late because they’re all grown.

  
  


Charlotte said that she still could, because there were gangs coming by twice a week, every week, and they want them driven off. They wanted to learn how to fight, her and Ket both, because they wanted to keep their home and each other safe.

  
  


Grandma Peacetree considered this for a while, and then nodded and said she’d see what she could do.

-

  
  


They learned to fight pretty damn well before Grandma had to leave again - well enough that when a burly man came to their door asking for money, Charlotte grabbed a spear and said, “No.”

And then she proved that she meant it, and then they really got left alone.

  
  


-

  
  


Two years after that, the moon got pulled too close, and monsters started running through the streets. Bounties got put out on them - bounties big enough to make the beasts from the moon worth fighting, if you were able.

Charlotte said she thought it was too dangerous, but Ket argued and said he thought it was worth it. If he could kill just a few lunar monsters, just a _few_ , then they would have enough to fix all the tables and the chairs, and even to restock the bar and start running it like a proper business again.

  
  


Charlotte and Emmil both asked him not to go, but he smiled and said he would be fine, that he would come back. He and some of the other guys from the constabulary had a group together, and they’d be okay if they stuck together.

  
  


Things really did go okay. People got hurt fighting the lunar monsters, but the monsters got hurt worse, and the amount of money Ket brought home was worth the angry sighs that Charlotte would give him when he got a new scar.

-

  
  


It went so well, in fact, that they decided to go for an even bigger bounty. There was a big crab-looking thing that had been ruining the farms outside the city proper, and the money on its head was almost certainly enough to stock the bar, and maybe even throw some kind of party. So Ket planned and prepared, and he and his friends from the Constabulary went out and hunted it down. They won - not without wounds - and they got the money and word got out that there’s was a group out there that was actually capable of dealing with the problem.

People started to think that they were mercenaries - _adventurers_ \- and were willing to pay to keep their land and families safe.

Ket frowned and said he’d do it, but he didn’t want to leave Coldport. He got an elbow to his ribs and a _come on, kid, this job will give us enough to retire!_

  
  


So he hugged Charlotte and Emmil and said he’d be back in two weeks. He made them promise to take care of themselves, and he went out to fight another monster from the moon.

-

  
  


A week and a half out, they stopped at a crossroad inn to take a rest. Ket saw a group of men in hoods playing cards at a corner table, and even though they seemed like the type that would try to kill him for winning too much, he couldn’t resist.

“Hi,” he said, “My name is Ket. Can I join in?”

The man across the table smiled and nodded and said, “Sure, sit down. Have a bite to eat, on me.”

  
  


He sat down and ate and asked their names and the stakes

  
The man who offered him the food turned to him with a sparkle in his eye that Ket would later find out was fey and said, “My name is King Elideer, and the stakes, my friend, are you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Snoot fixed my errors and should be hailed as a being of glory and goodness. They don't even listen to Critical Hit.


End file.
